Some people will tell you that you need to use day-old rice to make excellent fried rice, but that’s not exactly true. You can achieve the perfect level of chewy texture using a small table fan to dry off your freshly-made rice.

Who wants to wait a whole day to make fried rice? After some rigorous testing in his kitchen lab, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at Serious Eats found there’s a better way to make fried rice—and it requires very little waiting. Cook a batch of rice like you would normally, then spread it out onto a tray. Place that tray under a fan for about an hour. This rapidly dries off the surface moisture from the rice, and that makes your rice less likely to clump and more likely to develop that perfect chewiness when you fry it up in your wok. You can find more great tips for making the perfect batch of fried rice at the link below.